


The Spy Who Loved Me

by starlady



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate season 8, F/M, M/M, Post-Canon, Section 31, Spoilers for What We Left Behind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18852781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlady/pseuds/starlady
Summary: Garak meets someone he was and wasn't expecting.





	1. The Spy Who Loved Me

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for the 8x01 episode drafted in the DS9 documentary "What We Left Behind." That episode is set 20 years after the end of the series, 2395 in old Earth reckoning.

Garak emerged from the cave entrance, blinking in the strong sunlight, to find himself facing the business end of a decidedly non-standard issue Starfleet phaser. It was the all-black pistol model favored by Section 31; he’d seen them before in a few contexts, but never when one was being pointed directly at him.

Much less when the person doing the pointing was the rumored head of Section 31 himself.

Garak looked up from the phaser into the human operative’s eyes and smiled. For once, the expression wasn’t wholly put on. “Julian. How nice to see you again.” And how nice to know that his intelligence hadn’t been wrong, for all that he’d wished it otherwise. He hadn’t let emotion cloud his judgement; that was worth remembering.

The phaser in Commander Dr. Julian Bashir’s hands didn’t waver. Elim didn’t let his gaze linger on those hands, much as he might have wanted to; instead he kept his eyes on the doctor’s face, still youthful for a human underneath his rather thick beard, though it was now streaked with silver. “Secretary Garak. I should have known.”

“My dear doctor, do you mean to tell me that you and your Section 31 colleagues didn’t predict that I would become involved in trying to tamp down this conflagration you are so determined to foment?” Garak let a note of professional scorn enter his voice. “I must say I’m disappointed in you. And as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s _former_ Secretary these days.”

“I have never found your motivations easy to predict, Garak.” Julian’s mouth curved downward ever so slightly. “Surely you know that by now.”

“Sadly, I can’t say the same of you,” Garak said, then chanced a theatrical glance around. The upland Bajoran terrain remained, unfortunately for him, entirely deserted. For the first time since his last term in the government had ended, he felt a pang of regret; he could have used the security detail right about now. “Where is dear Ezri, by the way? I must admit I had hoped to see her again. At the very least I owe her congratulations on her most recent posting.”

The skin around Bashir’s eyes tightened minutely. Another man might not have noticed it, but Elim had known the human very well once upon a time; had even thought himself in love with him at one point. He had admitted that notion to precisely no one, although at least one other person had figured it out, and her knowledge might have passed to her successor. “Do you mean to tell me Captain Dax doesn’t know about your clandestine role?” Garak asked when Julian didn’t reply. “And they say romance is dead.”

“Spare me the insinuations, Garak,” Julian said, recovering from his tiny slip with aplomb. He looked every inch the mild-mannered chief medical officer of the U.S.S. _Emmett Till_ , down to the absurdly low rank pips on his collar given the length of his distinguished career and the quantity of his brilliant accomplishments, but everything about that appearance was a lie except for the coldness of his gaze. Garak would know; he’d spent his life trafficking in those same lies. For that matter, he’d taught Julian much of what he knew. “How much do you know, and who else have you told?”

“You mean, which of our old friends’ death warrants will you and your bloody Section 31 bastards sign next?” Garak countered, his voice sharpening. He’d had nothing but respect for Captain Nog, even affection, and the Ferengi certainly hadn’t deserved to die like a vole. “I think I shall decline to answer, Julian.”

“You don’t want to not tell me what I want to know, Garak,” Julian warned. “I’ll find out eventually no matter what.”

“Will you now.” Garak looked very pointedly at the phaser. “Wouldn’t that conflict with your oath as a physician, _Doctor_? ‘First, do no harm.’”

That would have gotten a rise out of him once, before Sloan, but Julian’s expression didn’t change. “There is such a thing as the greater good, old friend.”

“Yes, and this isn’t it.” Garak took a risk and paced a single step forward, narrowing the meter gap between them. “Julian, listen to me. It’s not too late. You can still come in from the cold. I know; I did it myself once. You helped me. We can still stop this, if we act now.”

For a moment, the human seemed to be considering it. The phaser didn’t waver, but his eyes went ever so slightly distant, and that was Garak’s chance to move, to attempt to overpower him or at least attempt to knock the phaser aside and duck back into the cave system for some meager attempt at cover—though with only one exit he knew about, the one at his back, that would be tantamount to delayed suicide. Just like attempting to flee downhill with Julian pursuing him would be; Cardassians aged more slowly than humans, but there was Julian’s genetic engineering to consider. No, it was overpowering and knocking him out or nothing.

But Garak didn’t want to lose this chance, and his moment of opportunity passed. After a few more seconds, when Julian’s expression firmed once more, Garak felt a shadow pass over his own heart. The painfully young man who had come to Deep Space Nine all those years ago, the man he had fallen first in lust and then in love with, was gone—or at least buried so deep that Garak couldn’t reach him. “I’m sorry, Garak,” Julian said, and he sounded sincere; of course he would. “But we both know that’s not possible. Bajor must join the Federation to have security in the Alpha Quadrant; destroying the wormhole represents the best way to do that. You know this.”

“You’re mad if you think Captain Sisko will ever allow you to destroy the Celestial Temple,” Garak told him. In point of fact, he had no idea whatsoever what Captain Sisko and the wormhole aliens would or wouldn’t allow, but he was quite certain that the return of Deep Space Nine’s first and best commander hadn’t factored into the Section 31 analysis. It certainly hadn’t factored into his, and they certainly weren’t better than he was. “And you’re mad to think the Bajorans will give up their beloved Prophets just because the wormhole is inaccessible to them. Sixty years of Cardassian occupation couldn’t beat their religion out of them; you honestly think Section 31 collapsing the wormhole will shake their faith? Julian, you’ve forgotten what Deep Space Nine taught you. You and Section 31 are fooling yourselves.”

“Perhaps,” Julian allowed, though he didn’t sound particularly unsure. “But we’ll take the odds as long as they’re of our own making. We—”

Whatever else he was going to say got cut off as Garak launched himself forward, using the meager outcropping of rock he’d stepped onto as a makeshift brace and stretching his arms out, inelegantly and idiotically, for the phaser.

He managed to take Julian enough by surprise to knock him off balance, hitting him low in the torso. They went down in the dirt in an inelegant scramble of limbs as Garak tried to wrench the phaser out of the doctor’s grasp.

He knew he’d failed when he felt the burn of a close-range discharge against his side. He felt or heard the blood rushing through his ears, and his vision went spotty; though he’d certainly been shot before, he wasn’t as used to pain as he’d once been. And this was his first time being shot at point blank range.

He realized he was on his back in the dirt when Julian’s face came into view above him, blocking out the sun and putting him in shadow. “Julian,” Garak said, blinking. “I’ve been shot.”

“I know, Garak,” Julian said patiently, and Garak closed his eyes when he felt the absurd warmth of the doctor’s human hands on his face, under his torso, supporting him. It had been too long. “I shot you. But don’t worry, you’re going to be just fine. You have the best doctor in Starfleet attending you.”

“I preferred…the best doctor in the Bajoran sector,” Garak said. Julian’s voice was soothing; it was easier to pretend that twenty years hadn’t passed if he didn’t have to see the doctor’s face. And keeping his eyes opened suddenly seemed like quite a lot of effort. “He was looking for…adventure. Have you seen him lately? He was…painfully naive, but deeply empathetic. And deeply attractive.”

“Elim—” Julian’s voice broke, and Garak didn’t have to ask for his prognosis. On some level, it was almost a relief; he hadn’t even had to use his poison. And he’d kept his hand in until the end; unlike poor Nog, he was dying in action, in the field. That it was in service of a cause he knew to be right, at least for now, was an unlooked-for bonus.

Or as Vedek Kira might have said, a blessing.

The colors in the world seemed noticeably dimmer when Garak forced his eyes open for what he knew to be the last time. He wanted to see Julian once again, and some part of him was gratified to behold the open heartbreak on the doctor’s face. He was still handsome underneath that dreadful beard; for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why Dax put up with it.

“My dear,” Garak said. He couldn’t seem to speak normally, but he had enough strength to put an unsteady hand to the doctor’s face. “Do you remember…when you came to Cardassia…after the end of the war?”

Julian nodded slightly, bringing his own hand up to cover Garak’s when the movement threatened to dislodge his fingers. “When I was practicing medicine in the refugee camps for six months. Of course I remember.”

Elim smiled. “I never loved you…more than I did then.”

He missed the exact moment the world went dark, robbing him of the light of Bajor’s sun. He was looking only at the tears, bright and unshed, in Julian Bashir’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter consists of my brainstorming/notes for where this would go if I were going to continue it.


	2. Concept Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Notes for a future continuation

In my mind this fic is probably Act IV of the third or fourth episode in the season. If I were continuing this, which I am not, the next scene would be Molly O’Brien and Joseph Sisko, having commandeered a runabout, beaming Bashir and Garak into a containment field, when we would learn that Garak’s death was faked by Bashir to try to get information out of him, but Bashir failed and couldn’t go through with it. Molly and Joseph have found out or worked out about Section 31 and Bashir’s involvement in it; he isn’t wild about the idea of having to kill them either, but he’s still keeping up a front.

I never decided whether Garak and Julian had ever actually had a physical relationship in this timeline, but I want to be clear that it absolutely doesn’t actually matter; they both knew that they loved each other and for whatever reason (I never decided) it didn’t work out. Very possibly they were both being stupid, or Bashir got scared, or something.

Future developments, if I were the one in charge of this season 8:

  * Bashir would be dragged into the Celestial Temple (by Sisko? Or sent through by Kira and Molly and/or Joseph, potentially) and forced to go through a long dark night of the soul with Sisko—at the end he would realize that Section 31’s specific plan is wrong and that he’s lost his way and wants out.
  * Probably in this scene he’s confronted by a vision of Nog. Only when he leaves the Temple and finds Nog on the runabout with him does he realize that Sisko saved Nog and the entire crew of the _Defiant_ , they have to run multiple trips to get everyone out
  * Nog is Not Happy with Bashir for murdering him and his crew and this lasts for longer than it did on Discovery, lol
  * Joseph: I didn’t realize I was setting up an interstellar taxi service for my divine father when I joined Starfleet. Sidebar: he is extremely young for his rank, canonically he is not older than 20. He has to be an ensign and he has to have gotten an exemption to start at the Academy at age 15. Or he could still be a cadet? But that doesn’t really match with him being the station science officer as stated in the episode
  * Potentially Bashir decides to work against Section 31 from within, potentially with Garak’s help. His subordinates would definitely kill him if they could. (I wonder if he got into Section 31 out of a 'can't beat 'em, join 'em' moment? Or was he trying to be closer to/more like Garak in some twisted way?)
  * Lol emotions? What are those, why would they talk about them (obviously this conversation would be delayed until the mid-season finale, probably, or even later, depending on the next point). In the season finale they would get together onscreen finally
  * When Dax finds out about Bashir being the head of Section 31 she leaves Julian on the grounds that their relationship is founded on a lie (she’s not wrong!).
  * Miles O’Brien: still confused, shocked that Julian became head of Section 31
  * My feeling is that Palik, the commander of DS9, is made a political sacrifice and forced to resign after the debacle on the station at the climax of the first episode. The temporary power vacuum creates an opportunity for Starfleet to step in; they order Ezri to become the temporary station commander, which no one is thrilled about but the Bajorans can’t really object because Sisko is a Starfleet officer. Also objecting makes them look shifty; they’re still in this relationship with the Federation
  * I guess this makes Bajor the Turkey of the UFP
  * Potentially Bashir then becomes acting commanding officer of the _Emmett Till_ ; he’s definitely passed the bridge officer exam (lol he’s the head of Section 31, he has no problem sending people to their death)
  * I actually debated making Bashir a captain, which does have some precedent in previous canon. But he wouldn’t go higher than that in terms of rank; the head of Section 31 in Discovery is a captain, after all, and also there’s the whole genetic engineering thing, Starfleet still doesn’t have full faith in him
  * In any case, the _Emmett Till_ basically plays the role of the _Defiant_ this season. It could also be that Nog takes over the  _Emmett Till_ \--though in that case it might be weird to have Ezri on DS9 and Nog on her ship. She's technically more senior, but Nog also wasn't getting along with Kira before the whole murder mission went down for very good reasons. Maybe put Ezri on the station because Starfleet thinks she has a better chance of calming everyone down. Nog: not thrilled
  * Actually it'd be hilarious if Nog was on the  _Emmett Till_ and Bashir was still doing his CMO act under his command. I guess I am rewriting the Culber + Tyler Discovery plotline, I'm okay with that.
  * Large remaining question marks: what are the Cardassians doing these days? How do they and the Klingons view this whole thing with the Jem’Hadar? What is Odo doing and how/when will he come back?
  * We see Worf and Martok agreeing that he has to stay until they work out what the hell’s going on and what the Empire should do; he uses some quirk of some treaty to basically force himself back into the senior staff meetings. Ezri: still not thrilled. Potential hilarity: Worf opening a Klingon embassy on the Promenade
  * How does Jake handle Sisko being back? How does Joseph? What about Kasidy?
  * I considered Garak having a dead man’s switch contacting Jake in some way telling him to make materials public: potentially the events of “In the Pale Moonlight”, perhaps other Section 31 misdeeds he’s gotten the goods on over the years. If this went through Bashir would be definitely forced to testify publicly. Potentially also he might wind up having to seek refuge on Cardassia, or allowed to emigrate to there/DS9 on the understanding that he won’t be coming back to the Federation.
  * No idea how Sisko’s resumption of humanity integrates into all of this! Or where the Jem’Hadar + Bajor plotline was going, or what Vedek Kira will do given the choices she’s made. Very sure that her old friends aren’t wild about some of them, and that will have fallout.
  * At least Nog’s not dead!
  * Like the Jem'Hadar, Molly is now a follower of the Prophets. (Remember when Opaka gave O'Brien her necklace to give to Molly before she left? That's now her earring (d'ja pagh).) She became increasingly interested in it when she was evacuated to Bajor during the war and openly converted/started wearing the earring when she entered the Academy. Keiko and Miles have tried to be supportive but they really don't understand her having acquired religion, which is definitely not as common in the Federation as it was on Earth before First Contact. This is part of why Molly wanted a posting to DS9.
  * Sad that I wasn’t able to work Morn into this fic. Never fear, he’s still hanging out in Quark’s. Maybe he’ll even have a speaking part in one of these episodes.




End file.
